Gladiolus aurantiacus

The flowers of Gladiolus aurantiacus have tiny orange speckles here on the background of a deeply yellow to pale orange corolla. Streaking instead of speckling, red instead of orange, may also occur in the flower form. The perianth tube is about 6 cm in length. The inner tepals, similarly shaped to the outer three, i.e. broadly ovate and tapering to acute tips, are considerably smaller than the outer ones. The tepals may also be somewhat narrower than seen here. The oblong anthers grow on filaments shorter than the three stigma branches of the style.

The plant grows from a large, globose, perennial tuber. The habitat is moist, stony grassland at high as well as low altitudes. The distribution area of the plant lies in KwaZulu-Natal, the south of Mpumalanga and the south of Swaziland (www.biodiversityexplorer.org; iSpot; JSTOR).